Sometimes
by AshNox
Summary: There was a time when he couldn't have passed between the bars. There was a time when he was young and strong and beautiful. There was a time when he was angry and a time when he was brave. But time, like the waves that crash endlessly against the walls of Azkaban, goes on and on and on...


**Disclaimer: This is fanfiction and anything recognizable belongs to J K Rowling.  
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**Between the bars.**

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There was a time when he couldn't have passed between the bars. There was a time when he was young and strong and beautiful. There was a time when he was angry and a time when he was brave. But time, like the waves that crash endlessly against the walls of Azkaban, goes on and on and on.

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Sirius does not dream or think. You would be insane to. Sirius is blessed with insanity. Insanity lets you watch flies crawl on the wall for hours and hours, thinking only about each tiny leg moving, each twitch to left and right of their funny little sucky mouths, poking out like straws through which they can vomit and suck up their own excrement, and your own, over and over again. They leave tiny black dots on things.

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Sometimes Sirius forgot that he could turn into a dog. Sometimes when he remembered, it was only a half remember, and he would transform with amazement and a thrill like no other Azkaban provided.

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He never forgot how to transform, only that it was possible to do so.

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It seemed strange that the animagus form grew thin. If Peter grew thin would his rat-form grow thin also? Or would it always have more than enough human body squashed into its tiny size for that to never happen. When James expanded into his stag form there was always enough of him to fill it out, even thought the deer was much bigger than the man. Sirius didn't know. He knew that the dog-form grew thinner and eventually it grew so thin that it could squeeze between the bars. Peter would have been able to squeeze through the bars straight away. Peter would have crawled straight out of Azkaban in his tiny rat form straight away. A rat was the best animagus form to have, Sirius was sure. Or a bird. A phoenix like Professor Dumbledore, or crows like the Carrows. Sirius would like to fly away from Azkaban. He did not like to live in the body of a dog, in the mind of a dog, that felt every emotion a thousand times more deeply than a human could, and understood it's predicament even less.

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The Dementors didn't understand the dog-form. They stopped with their torture and drifted away from him. Maybe they thought they had broken him and there was nothing left of his soul to drink.

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The dog-form walked about Azkaban. It was big and strong, but narrow now. Sometimes, when he was feeling more thoughtful about things in general, Sirius wondered if the dog-form had not grown thin but had actually grown narrow specifically so it could pass between the bars.

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In Azkaban you died from many things. Not just from despair or apathy. The lack of sanitation and proper food and water was what actually killed you. Sirius's dog form ate rats. It ate most things it was possible to swallow down. Sometimes, when it found a very plentiful source of sustenance, decaying in some abandoned cell, Sirius wondered if the dog-form would fill out again, and leave him trapped in this different cell. But all the cells were the same, and he imagined that time would make him again grow thin enough so he could get between the bars again.

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Bella was in Azkaban. Lots of people were. Sometimes he went into their cells so that he wasn't alone, but he never changed out of his dog form. He didn't like them. They were mad and terrible people, whispering about the horrible things they had done, and even worse things they fantasised about doing. He didn't like them but he liked being alone even less. He felt very young, listening to them.

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Sirius Black was twenty one when he went to Azkaban. He had no idea afterwards how old he was. Time passed, waves crashed against the walls of Azkaban, loud when the tide was high and the moon was full, distant when it drew away. Darkness and daylight and storms and sunlight, but time does not really _pass_ when there is nothing to measure it against.

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~o0o~

**Where the sea and the sky meet.**

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Sometimes Sirius followed the tunnel that carried all the filth out of Azkaban, to its very end, to the outside of the prison.

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At the very end of the tunnel he would stand, dog-form, nose out in the cold salty air, paws on the very edge of the pipe, gazing at the blurry grey horizon. It was always grey. There was a grey sky and a grey sea that appeared to meet in a thin line in the distance. It was an illusion. The place where the sky and the sea met each other existed only in the illusion. Really the earth was an orb, spinning in a vastness of space unimaginable. Were he to sprout wings and fly forever he would never find the place where the sea met the sky. Sometimes he looked at it until he fell asleep, and would slump precariously close to the drop onto the rocks or raging sea hidden in the mist below him.

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Sometimes he walked down the tunnel meaning not to stop at the pipes mouth, but to step on outwards into the cold outside air, and plummet through the mist into the cold grey sea, or onto the cold grey rocks. But he never did.

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Sometimes he looked out at the grey sea, for little boats. Sometimes he thought about Remus trying to find him, searching the vast oceans for the prison island. Sometimes he thought Remus would come and rescue him. But he never did.

~o0o~

**Time is the greatest distance between two places.**

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When the Minister came to the prison Sirius turned back into a man. He asked the Minister for the paper so he could do the crossword. He didn't want to do the crossword. He didn't have ink or a quill. He liked looking at the faces and pretending that he wasn't so alone.

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On the front cover of the paper was a picture of Molly Prewet. Sirius looked at her face for a long time. Molly Prewet looked out of the paper at Sirius, as she had once looked at him in real life. Sirius remembered Fabian and Gideon, when he looked at her. He remembered them alive and he remembered them dead. The paper started to mould away as the waves crashed and time passed.

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Then Sirius noticed that some of the other people with Molly looked like Fabian and Gideon even though they were dead.

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Occasionally Sirius dreamt that he wasn't in Azkaban. That Azkaban was the nightmare and really he was in bed, safe, warm and loved. There was a terrible feeling in his stomach and his chest when he woke up and realized where he was.

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When he realized that the people in the picture were the sprawl of red haired toddlers and babies he felt that same feeling. That the world had forgotten him and carried on, that years had passed and would keep on passing forever until all the time was gone. That all the people he had loved had gone, taken away not just by death like James. But taken away by time as well.

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A little while after that he saw Peter in his rat form in the picture as well and then he felt like his stomach and his chest had been slammed into and crushed until he couldn't breath, or move, or bare to think. Because Peter was alive. And Peter was at Hogwarts. And baby Harry was at Hogwarts as well. And Sirius was in Azkaban. And the Dementors torture was not as great as the terror and guilt and desperation that forced him through the tunnel that lead to the outside world, and before he could finalize a whispered thought of farewell to his miserable existence or those he had loved, he was plunging through the grey mist to discover if grey water or grey rocks lay hidden below.

~o0o~

**Sometimes.**

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Sometimes when he was going to sleep Sirius felt like he was falling down into the grey mist, with his stomach flying up into his throat and the wind rushing to meet him, and he would fly upright in the bed with a start trying to drag a breath into his chest, muscles tensed for the water or rocks to meet him.

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Sometimes he woke up in the dark and thought he could still hear the waves crashing against the walls of Azkaban, and his mind prepared itself for the icy cold of the dementors.

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Sometimes he woke up in the morning, when the sun poured through the parted curtains so fiercely that it made his closed eyelids Gryffindor red, and his body was already curled against warm familiar skin, fingers linked beneath the blankets, lips and soft breath against his face. With every one of his five sense he knew that he was not in Azkaban any more. That he was safe and he was never going back there again.

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Sometimes.


End file.
